


The Black Horse

by K_L_Beck



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Athelas - Freeform, Dúnedain - Freeform, Gen, Healing, Horses, Rivendell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 01:04:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17571371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_L_Beck/pseuds/K_L_Beck
Summary: Tolkien casually tells us that eight drowned horses were found downstream in the Bruinen river after the flood that Elrond created to save Frodo and his companions from the Ringwraiths.What happened to the ninth horse?





	The Black Horse

When the world stopped spinning, when he coughed up all the water and finally pulled himself to his feet, he was aware only of pain. Every muscle and bone ached, and there were sharp twinges as he moved. But he had felt terrible pain before, and at least he could walk. He picked his way over the slippery rocks of the shallow river and climbed the gentle bank, then stood head down, breathing hard, exhausted by the effort. Slowly, he began to sense his surroundings, perhaps a few minutes later, perhaps an hour; he was not a creature who measured time.

He first noticed the smell of green grass, not yet winter blighted, and began to graze. His jaws and teeth, though sore, still worked, and the grass quieted his fear, which he had felt as a trembling in his legs and an uneasy feeling that he was not alert enough to sense his enemies. He also badly needed food. The pale rider had been driving him hard for many days. The pale rider had been as stupid, arbitrary, and cruel as any other man, though both more helpless and more frightening, but he had usually let the stallion take the daylight hours to graze and sometimes given him grain as well. Lately, though, he had had only an hour to two a day to graze, and not on proper grass, but only on forest shrubs and branches. Now, the tough grass of this clearing tasted sweet as clover in a spring field.

After a while, he became irritated by his reins. Hanging down in front, they got in the way of eating, and the curb bit hurt his sore mouth. His right fore hoof landed on the reins near his muzzle, imprisoning his head. In an effort more than unconscious but less than calculated, he kept his foot down and wrenched his head up, breaking the already damaged bridle. He shook it off gratefully, spat out the bit, and continued to graze.

Before sunset, the horse found a larger clearing up the slope where the ground was too rocky for trees. He grazed and dozed by turns for the rest of the afternoon and the night, too hungry and too anxious to sleep deeply, much less lie down. In the morning, he drank deeply from the river, and spent another day and night mostly in grazing. Some horses his size would have simply finished starving to death without oats or at least good hay, but his ancestors had been bred to run free on the plains of Rohan. The horses of the Eastenmet were expected to feed themselves except when they had been ridden hard and long. The horse slowly regained strength, though his ribs still protruded badly.

Though November had come in, early autumn weather lingered in the valley by the river, and even the high moors above were free from hard frost or snow. Quite soon, the horse risked an afternoon nap, lying in a sunny clearing, and woke refreshed. As he stood, he felt renewed anger at his saddle. It had slipped under his belly, and the stirrups banged against his legs when he went faster than a walk. After a few hours rubbing it against trees, and some careful rolling, the girth strap broke, and the horse was finally free of human constraint.

As he became stronger, the horse began to look for others of his kind. Despite his brutal training and several years of near-solitude, he was not a solitary creature. It felt safer not to be alone. Wordless longing and quiet anxiety made him restless. Once or twice he smelled horses, but the scent was faint and somehow strange, mixed with something that both attracted and repelled him. At last, up on the moors, he smelled a herd of horses upwind, mingled with the tempting scent of good hay. There was human scent too, but fainter, as if the men had come and gone.

Cautiously, he approached. It was a broodmare herd, about a dozen mares with their six or seven-month colts and fillies. They were gathered around a fresh pile of hay. The hay smelled irresistible, despite the strange scent that clung to some of the mares. Those in particular were light-boned as hinds, but seemed strong, and paced with an strange dancing step. Horses with that gait are better to ride elf-fashion, without saddle or bridle, but the stallion did not know it. He only knew it was strange to him, and made him nervous.

The mares seemed wary but not hostile, shifting to give him room at the hay, which was his first concern. When he had eaten his fill, he looked around, nostrils flaring to take in their scent. At this time of year, none were coming into season, but the smell of healthy mares was itself sweet and comforting. He trailed them when they went to drink from a stream, grazed near them, and spent the night nearby. He wandered closer and closer, until they let him graze among them, and one or two touched noses flirtatiously with him before shying away.

Two days later, he scented men coming with more hay and he hid long before they arrived with a two-wheeled cart drawn by oxen. He stayed well away until they left. Once more, everything seemed peaceful. A few days later, some more mares and foals appeared from further out on the moors, and the stallion saw three or four riders against the sky. The longest night had nearly come, and it was time for the broodmare herd of the elves and Dunedain to leave the moors and spend the winter in Rivendell, sheltering in barns at night and eating hay and warm mash during the months of cold rain and snow. They didn’t need to be herded home like ordinary horses; all the grown mares had done this before and willingly followed the lead of the riders.

The stallion had another idea altogether. The mares seemed fond of him, and he could not understand that they also liked and respected the men and horses that had come to bring them away. Before the ring of riders tightened, he was taken by his natural impulse to lead away as many mares as he could to establish his own herd. He ran a little in the direction free from riders, southwards, and looked back over his shoulder, expecting at least some mares to follow him. None did.

He circled back behind them and began to herd them as a stallion does, looming behind them, threatening to nip while staying clear of their hind hooves. Three of the older mares turned and faced him, as if daring him to take them on. He approached with cautious bluster, flaring his nostrils, pawing the turf, but also keeping a sharp eye out for their attack. Mares didn’t work together like this, in his experience. As he closed with one of the mares, wanting to frighten rather than harm her, he suddenly got a sharp kick in the ribs from a fourth mare that had sneaked up behind him. Wheeling to face her, he felt a painful nip on his neck.

His long training in silence faltered, and he squealed in rage and pain, now ready to hurt one of the mares if he could catch her. They scattered. It was like trying to bite water. A new sound penetrated his anger, human shouting, and he heard and then saw two of the riders racing towards him. He galloped straight up and down the hills, risking the uneven ground, and at last got safely away. Far from the sound and scent of men, he stood panting, frustrated and newly lonely.

When he scouted out the hillside where the mares had been, they and the riders were gone. It had rained, and even the remaining tufts of hay were soggy and starting to mold. As winter deepened on the downs, the horse had little time for sadness. Getting enough food became his main concern. No snow covered the ground as yet, but sometimes sleet and cold rain drove him back to the river valley, although he had eaten down most of the clearings that he knew. One day, he wandered upriver, but stopped after a mile or so when the scent of men became stronger, mingled with that other scent that troubled him. Downriver was impassible, a place of cliffs and rocks.

On rainless days, the stallion grazed on the downs, tearing at the low brown moor grass and heather. Both filled his belly but gave him little strength. Haunted by cold and bitter hunger, all the worse because he had been regaining health and strength, the horse ate like some earth clearing machine of the Dark Lord’s, biting off mouthful after mouthful at the roots, leaving bare earth showing where he passed.

One cloudy morning, straying far from the river, the horse’s anxious hunger left him almost surrounded by the orcs before he noticed them. He smelled them, heard four, saw two. A more sensible horse would have bolted, and probably escaped. The stallion, though, had been trained not to fear orcs, and in his loneliness, his untapped wells of anger had grown. Many of the foot soldiers he had been taught to run down and kill, with or without a rider, had been orcs fallen out of favor with the Eye. Toward the end of his training, some had been armed with sword or spear, and all had died, though one had scarred him. He did look carefully, as he’d also been taught, to see if any of them had bows. Only a horse of great wit could have been trained to this, and remember that training at such a moment years later, but the black horse was one.

Once he identified the bowman, the black horse wheeled, quick as a cat, and charged up the slope toward him, teeth bared. The orc shot, but the arrow went wide, and the luckless creature tried to run. The black horse grabbed him by neck and shook him like a rat, tossing aside the corpse. Then he turned to look for the other orcs. Two were backing away, and one was running. He nearly chased the running orc, but his anger was already slipping away, exhaustion returning. Instead, he turned and cantered away satisfied, until he felt a fiery pain in his rump. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a fifth orc, one who had stayed invisibly still behind a bush, waving another bow and grinning. “Come back, you chicken-hearted sister-shaggers,” the orc yelled to his three remaining fellows, “We’ll have fresh meat today!”

The stallion didn’t understand the words, but the pain of the wound and the confidence in the orc’s voice kept him running. The arrow fell off as the horse ran, but the pain continued to worsen; his breathing hurt and his insides twisted in pain. The arrow had been poisoned, and the orcs expected him to drop in his tracks almost at once, but the horse had been given some immunity to poisons, and wound was shallow and bled freely. He fell to a shambling trot, his pain and dizziness increasing. The orcs followed, cursing the archer for only scratching its hide, while the archer pointed to the blood sign and yelled back that the horse would drop any moment.

Before the horse’s story came to its end, the orcs were startled by the sound of a great horn. The notes were the rally call of a Ranger patrol, one which would equal or surpass them in numbers. They started, milled a bit, and turned to flee. Certain horseflesh was not worth the price of almost certain death. The clouds were starting to thin, and the orcs feared too that they might be caught in the open in full sunlight, almost blind to their enemies.

The young Ranger blew the horn again for good measure and smiled grimly at his grandfather as they hid from the fleeing orcs. Rangers of normal fighting age had returned from searching for the Ringwraiths, but told of orcs massing in the Western foothills of the Misty Mountains. Most Rangers left again with Rivendell’s warriors to organize a concerted attack, so the young and the old were still working with a few remaining elven archers to maintain a screen of scouts around the valley. Together, the youth and his elder followed the orcs. Occasionally the young man used his sling to dislodge a rock from across the valley, helping the panicked orcs conclude that a full troop was after them. After an hour, they were confident that the orcs were headed for their base camp—which would need to be attacked—and not doubling back.

The rangers walked back towards Rivendell, silent and wary but more relaxed as the clouds parted and the pale winter sun shone down. Around midday, they began to talk. “I’ll go alert the main patrol,” the old man said. “With any luck, we’ll be able to track this lot back to their camp, and plan an attack tomorrow morning or the one after. You can track the horse.”

“The horse, Grandfather?”

“Yes, there’s something strange about that creature. I recognize his hoof prints. He was that stallion that attacked the mares up on the moors, or perhaps tried to drive them off to form a feral herd.”

The lad nodded, “Mother told me about it, and that she’d had you come up and read the ground afterwards.” He hesitated, “Will you be well on your own, Grandfather?”

His grandfather clouted his head softly, “I am of Dunedain blood nearly unmingled, boy. I’ll be fast enough to fight into my eighties, with Oromë’s blessing, and strong until I’m well over one hundred.”

“I’m only concerned you’ll be alone at suppertime. You make the worst bannock, for all your age and strength.”

“Disrespectful pup!” They laughed.

Meanwhile, the stallion, hearing no more pursuit, had slowed to a walk. He drank thirstily from a stream, then found his way into a young fir grove at the edge of the moors. Hiding himself among the closely spaced trees, he stood swaying, weak, dizzy, and too sick to be afraid. The afternoon sun was lost among the trees, and he shivered with cold as well. Suddenly his head came up. Two men were approaching . . . no, one man and one other being with that disturbing smell he had been troubled by since coming to the valley. He wanted to fight, but he could only stagger further into the trees.

The young Ranger trotted carefully on the horse’s trail, alert for orcs or other interlopers. He saw that the horse’s bleeding had ended, but that it had walked more and more slowly. It had stumbled once, then twice. He wondered whether he would find its body on the ground. Instead, he heard a soft voice calling his name, “Doron.” It was one of the few elves of Rivendell he knew fairly well, a slight woman who worked with the valley’s horses, as Doron’s mother did.

“Calen?” he called in return. “Do you see the horse?”

“Yes, but come in quietly. The poor wretch is panicking, and I don’t want it to weaken itself further.”

Silently, he walked to her side. As usual, she was dressed in worn riding boots, a calf-length split skirt, a man’s green wool tunic, and coiled braids, but neat and comely withal. “Calen,” he said with a smile to make it clear he wasn’t scolding, “Elrond’s order is that everyone who leaves the Rivendell itself should wear a mail shirt and carry a bow.”

She smiled absently in turn. “I wasn’t planning to walk all the way up here, but the elven lead mare told me to come this way—no words, but she made her point—so I just turned and did it.” They went forward cautiously until they could see the horse clearly. It, no, he, stumbled further into the trees, until he could go no further. Calen made a loop in the rope she carried, and handed the other end to Doron. “When I have him around the head, snub your end around a tree. This is no wild hill pony; he must have been trained, so he’ll respect a solid tie.”

The horse, torn between trying to force his way between the thick fir boughs and turning to attack, simply froze for the first time in his life. He felt much of what a man would feel in his place, sickness, terror, helplessness, and fury, everything except shame, which only speaking creatures can know. The rope settled around his neck, smooth and sliding quickly to choking tightness. He fought it for a few breaths, then subsided, shivering and panting. The one who had trapped him came up to him, giving off that terrifying scent he would have done anything to flee. Quickly, it—or she?—buckled on a sturdy leather bridle, and tied the lead to a nearby tree. Some distant part of him wondered why he found her so frightening, as she was small, and her hands and voice were gentle.

“Doron,” Calen called softly, “come look. He has a strange brand under the wound on his rump. . . . Be careful of a kick: he’s very frightened.”

Doron tied the rope to a sturdy branch and walked closer. “Was it a poisoned arrow?”

“I think so, and I can’t understand why he’s not dead already, unless the poison bled out. Something else smells wrong about him, but I don’t yet know what it might be. I’ll hold his head while you get a look at the brand.”

“It’s a circle—no, an oval with slightly pointed ends, and a wider vertical line down the middle, big, and burned cruelly deep.” As he spoke, he understood what he had seen, and looked to Calen to confirm his thought.

She turned white. “I have not seen that brand since Elendil and Gil-Galad marched into battle. The poor creature bears the mark of the Lidless Eye.”

Doron turned as red as she was white. This skinny “girl,” sweet in her scruffy way, had seen the forces of the Last Alliance. She had lived through the whole tale of the rise of Arnor and its fall. And he was used to joke with her like some Bree lass selling apples. He had just now taken her to task for not wearing her coat of mail!

Calen swiftly put aside her fright and laughed merrily. “Oh child, do you believe that I think less of you because you are so young? You Dunedain live as long as elven steeds, and they are the creatures I love best in Middle Earth. It is my joy to jest with you as it is to gambol with the colts in summer.” She patted his cheek as he stood dumbfounded.

He shook himself, recovering his wits and taking his bow. “It must be the missing horse of the Nazgul, Calen. Stand back, and I will end its suffering.”

“No!” She paused. “I do not think he is evil, though he may be ruined by cruel training or evil magic. You guard him here (don’t stand too close, and he may calm a bit), and I’ll return with herbs to treat the wound, and perhaps some better aid as well.” Before he could argue, she took off at a trot, heading back to Rivendell.

Doron and the horse stood looking at one another, neither happy. The horse was still cold and sick. The poisoned cut burnt like fire, but he was able to keep on his feet. Doron felt vulnerable in the thick fir grove that gave him no clear line of sight. He edged up toward the border of the moors, where he could see better. At last he heard hoof beats approaching from down the valley. Three elven archers, riding with saddles but no bridles, and two women riding elf fashion, Calen and a tall woman whom he had seen only from a distance. Close up, her queenly beauty overwhelmed him.

“Lady Arwen,” he said, bowing deeply.

“No need for ceremony, young Dunedan,” she smiled. “After all, I am here on the urgent orders of a certain groom, who insisted I come so quickly I had only time to pull on my brother’s breaches under my gown and don a coat of mail.” Calen smiled and ducked her head, looking a bit shamefaced.  

“Build a small fire and heat water, please.” Arwen said, looking intently at the black horse. “Calen, do you think you can get him to eat some of your herbs against the poison?”

“I’ll try, Lady.”

One of the elven archers lit a fire while the other two spread out on guard, and Doron went for water from the nearby stream. Calen approached the horse, murmuring soothingly, but he jerked back, clenching his teeth. The new creature behind her terrified him as nothing had since the first time he saw one of the pale riders, a creature neither living nor dead.

“Make a poultice, then,” Arwen said. “You can apply it when I’ve bathed the wound with athelas.”

When the smell of athelas rose from the heated water, the grim elven archers smiled with joy; Calen laughed out loud; but Doron felt as if he could run up mountains and vanquish a dozen foes at one stroke. The horse trembled, torn between fear and painful memory. For him, the athelas held the essence of what terrified him about these strange creatures but also the scent of the plains of Rohan when he was a colt, before he was stolen away by the servants of the Lidless Eye.

Arwen soaked a cloth in the water, and held it under the horse’s nose.  He stood still, shaking. Then she walked around to his side and gently touched the wound with the warm wet cloth. The horse reared, fighting bridle and rope, and screamed aloud. Doron had never heard the like, but Calen and the archers remembered the terrible cry of a horse gut-stabbed in battle.

Arwen stepped back quickly and waited until the echoes of the scream had died away, then soaked the cloth again and returned to the stallion. One of the archers said, “Lady,” beginning to call her back, fearing for her safety, but she smiled at him.  

“The worst is over, wait and watch.” This time, the horse sniffed the athelas-wet cloth with interest, as if it were a treat, and only twitched his hide and shifted his feet when she bathed the wound. “Calen, bring the herb poultice; he’ll bear it now.” One of the archers doused the fire and the other two stood guard while Arwen fed the horse some grass twisted with the steeped athelas leaves.

He ate them eagerly, already standing straighter, the pain clearly falling away. Calen untied the rope around his neck and freed the halter from the tree, making ready to lead him back down the valley. To her surprise, he refused to follow her. All of his cruel training, done with dark magic, had left him when the athelas healed him. He dug in his hooves more like a donkey than a war horse. Somewhere over Calen’s shoulder, the horse she had ridden sighed, for all the world like a put-upon auntie. It was the elven lead mare.

She came up to the stallion, breathed into his nostrils, then turned to Calen, waiting with switching tail until she unbuckled the bridle from the stallion’s head. Slowly the mare walked down the valley toward the winter barns, then paused and looked back at the black horse with an imperious snort. He followed her obediently. Though the wound still hurt, his sickness was passing, and for the first time since he was a colt, the black horse knew a sense of herd and home.

“You can ride behind me, if you like, Calen,” Arwen called.

“Thank you, no, Lady, you get back quickly and safely. I’ll walk with Doron.”

“Safely, yes,” Arwen gave a small sigh, and rode off among her guards.

 

 


End file.
